Contemporary Issue Teenagers Face Today: Teenage Depression (TD)

Adolescence: Contemporary Issues and Resources
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Contemporary Issues Teenagers face Today
Teenagers face various issues that may live with them and affect them to adulthood. Some of these issues include addiction to drugs, bullying, depression, anxiety disorders, and alcohol abuse, to mention a few (DeSilver, 2020). Some of these issues may go unnoticed, while others are usually evident, which paves the way for nurses and other health professionals to take up their role in managing them. The essay will examine teenage depression, including how it affects behavior and well-being.
Teenage Depression (TD)
TD is one of the major issues teenagers face today. According to UNICEF (2023), depression presents in teenagers as extended periods of being irritable and unhappy. Unfortunately, many are times, TD goes unnoticed. Several external stressors are associated with TD. These include poor living conditions, discrimination against and exclusion, especially by peers, and inability to access quality services and support, such as the teenagers living in humanitarian settings (Windarwati et al., 2020). The prolonged prevalence of these stressors may aggravate the symptoms of TD, which include having a depressed mood, impaired concentration, fatigue, suicidal thoughts, and psychomotor retardation, to mention a few.
Assessment Strategies for TD
A thorough assessment should be done before a diagnosis is made. Several assessment strategies can be used either as single tools or in combination. These include a thorough psychological evaluation done by mental health nurse, physical examination, and laboratory tests. A psychological evaluation may involve a series of tools. One of these is the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) tool which checks for behavioral changes and the severity of TD (APA, 2023). According to APA (2023), the BDI tool allows teenagers to report by themselves, completing twenty-one items in a multiple-choice format. Another tool is the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D). Teenagers report by themselves, completing twenty items. CES-D checks for the dimension of TD in the past week’s duration (APA, 2023). Additional assessment questions would include whether the teenager ...